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Prostate cancer

MRI/US-guided biopsy—a viable alternative to TRUS-guidance

Nature Reviews Urology volume 10, pages 559–560 (2013)Cite this article

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MRI/ultrasonography (MRI/US)-fusion biopsy outperforms systematic ultrasonography-guided biopsy, detecting more high-grade prostate tumours while being less able to detect low-grade cancer, thus preventing overtreatment of indolent tumours. Any of several MRI-guided biopsy techniques has the potential, therefore, to replace systematic transrectal ultrasonography-guided prostate biopsies in the future.

Key Points

  • MRI-guided biopsy is rapidly emerging as an alternative to systematic transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS)-guided biopsy for accurately detecting and localizing aggressive prostate cancers

  • Different MRI-guided prostate biopsy methods include direct MRI-guided, MRI/US-fusion-guided, and cognitive-fusion-guided biopsy6

  • In the future, MRI-guided biopsy will inevitably replace systematic TRUS-guided prostate biopsies

  • Implementation of MRI/US-fusion-guided biopsies requires caution: good quality MR images and image interpretation is required, accurate segmentation and registration is essential for targeting tumour suspicious regions with MRI/US-fusion guidance, and small lesions have a chance of being missed using this technique

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References

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Henk-Jan Huisman for assistance in discussion of content and contributions to writing this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, University Medical Center Nijmegen, PO Box 9101, Nijmegen, 6500, HB, Netherlands

    Wendy J. M. van de Ven & Jelle O. Barentsz

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  1. Wendy J. M. van de Ven
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  2. Jelle O. Barentsz
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Correspondence to Jelle O. Barentsz.

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van de Ven, W., Barentsz, J. MRI/US-guided biopsy—a viable alternative to TRUS-guidance. Nat Rev Urol 10, 559–560 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrurol.2013.179

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